Su­per slim­mer Les hopes to in­spire oth­ers

ASUPER-SLIM­MER who shed a third of his body weight is en­cour­ag­ing other men to trans­form their lives.

Les Hutchin­son, 58, was 21st 8lbs in 2009 when he de­cided enough was enough.

But the de­ci­sion to join his lo­cal branch of Slim­ming World in Poyn­ton wasn’t easy.

Les said it can be hard for men to ad­mit that they need help to lose weight and es­pe­cially dif­fi­cult to walk through the doors of a weigh loss club for the first time.

He said: “When men want to lose weight they usu­ally think about ex­er­cis­ing more or fol­low­ing a diet on their own, not join­ing a group like Slim­ming World, so it was a big step for me but one I’m def­i­nitely glad I took.

“When I went to the group for the first time, I was wor­ried that I’d be the only man there and stand out like a sore thumb. It didn’t feel like that at all though, ev­ery­one was re­ally wel­com­ing and all of the mem­bers made an ef­fort to help me feel like part of the group.

“Ul­ti­mately it doesn’t mat­ter if you’re a man or a woman, younger or older, be­cause ev­ery­one in that group is there for the same rea­son – to lose weight, im­prove their health and feel bet­ter about them­selves.

Les said the sup­port of the group helped him lose an im­pres­sive seven stone – a third of his body weight – drop­ping to 14st 7.5lbs.

He said: “I couldn’t be­lieve how easy I found it to start mak­ing changes and how quickly I no­ticed a dif­fer­ence in my­self – from the first week, ac­tu­ally.

“Be­fore I joined Slim­ming World I didn’t think that eat­ing healthily would ever leave me feel­ing sat­is­fied and I ex­pected to be hun­gry all the time while I was los­ing weight. But I found I could still en­joy all my favourite meals, from a curry with rice to steak, chips and salad, by mak­ing them dif­fer­ently.”

Les’s achieve­ment saw him reach the semi-fi­nals of Slim­ming World’s Man of the Year 2015 con­test, where he got to meet soap star and model Gemma Atkin­son.

Jayne Burslem, who runs the Poyn­ton group which Les at­tends, said: “Men of­ten think that slim­ming clubs like Slim- ming World are fe­ma­le­only en­vi­ron­ments.

“Yet with six in 10 men classed as over­weight or obese com­pared to five in 10 women, more men than women need sup­port to slim down and im­prove their health.

“It’s fan­tas­tic to see blokes like Les show­ing ev­ery­one that Slim­ming World is a man’s world too.”

●● Slim­line Les Hutchin­son with soap star and model Gemma Atkin­son af­ter reach­ing the semi-fi­nals of the Slim­ming World con­test